13. Van Halen 1984 1984 (Warner Bros.)
Heavy Metal
A timeless jump in metal history.
The Lowdown
Like the Manowar album before it this is another album that has a measly 33 minutes of playing time to its credit, but then again short albums were something that Van Halen seemed to specialise in, as their longest to date had actually been their debut which clocked in just around the 35 minute mark. Up until their fourth album
Fair Warning every Van Halen album has been featured on these ‘best of lists’ which was fitting considering that they were the premier metal act in the USA. The only album to have not featured was their previous
Diver Down which had consisted of ludricous covers and a couple of dour sounding original tracks, even though I really dig the sinister sounding instrumental “Intruder” from that album, something that easily could've been on
1984.
1984 released in January 1984 would go onto become not only the band’s biggest selling album ever, but would also turn the band into a household name around the world largely thanks to the single “Jump” and its colourful accompanying video, both a song and video which seemed to appeal to everybody out there regardless of their musical tastes and for that reason alone, the “Jump” video can really be seen as a crowning achievement of what MTV style videos were all about. The album though of course, is just as famous as also being the final album with dynamic frontman David Lee Roth until 2012’s
A Different Kind of Truth, as ‘Diamond Dave’ clearly felt that he was now bigger than the band and could do even better by himself (for anybody interested dig out his solo career which begins on the mind-numbing EP
Crazy from the Heat, even though “California Girls” has a groovy video) Other facts of note at this time state that Van Halen were actually the highest paid metal band in the world and Eddie Van Halen was certainly the highest profile metal guitarist around, which was surely helped by his guitar solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” the previous year. The nine tracks on
1984 can more or less be split between their premier sounding synth driven efforts and the more traditional hard rocking tracks. The former of course is what qualifies the album for its placing on this year’s list, as these tracks are the ones that are indebted to the band’s use of synths which have now been moved to the forefront of proceedings, whereas before the band had largely used synths in a texturing fashion. The album opens in the most synthy way possible with the atmospheric instrumental “1984” and its striking circular sounding synths then dominate the already mentioned uplifting “Jump” the showcase track from the album. Next track “Panama” in my mind is actually closer to the spirit of the band than "Jump" with its darkish and sleazy vibe, just check out that video and David Lee Roth’s trademark drawl and then of course there's “Hot for Teacher” which could easily be its sister track and the whole song actually feels like some crazy instrumental with a few singing sections inserted, and in many ways both “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher” are the perfect summary of Van Halen at this time. My personal favourite here though has to be the synthy “I’ll Wait” the type of chilly sounding synth driven track that I really love and something uniquely of its time and the song would prove to be the strongest pointer of where the band would go on their next album. The heavier tracks on the album, which I refer to as the ‘hard rocking tracks’ are actually the tracks that I feel the band spent less time working on and these include “Top Jimmy” “Drop Dead Legs” “House of Pain” and “Girl Gone Bad” the first three I can take or leave, but “Girl Gone Band” is a pretty damned great hard rock track. The biggest characteristic of
1984 is probably the band’s ever growing use of poppy synthesizers, which was something that was a growing trend in metal/rock around this time and ZZ Top' s
Eliminator album is the perfect example of this. Bands at this time would employ an outside synth player to do the business on a song or two like with “Mystery” from Dio’s
The Last in Line album and in some cases like with Van Halen it was an inside job where Eddie Van Halen took over the responsibility. Synths in metal were now seen as a way of really enhancing a metal band’s sound in an easy way and a band could opt to use them or not, rather than going the whole hog and being an integral part the band’s identity as with Deep Purple for example. This would be the direction that Van Halen would take on their next album and other premier metal bands like Iron Maiden would also move into this direction as well. Finally
1984 is a timeless and very much an iconic metal album of its time and perfectly displays the cohesive ability that the band had in dishing out sexy sounding metal with poppy hooks, but always with enough macho metal in mind to keep metalheads interested.
David Lee Roth- Vocals
Eddie Van Halen- Guitar/keyboards
Michael Anthony- Bass
Alex Van Halen- Drums
Production- Ted Templeman